Ric Martini:
Finding time to write

Something had to give, so Martini retreated from campus, except for an occasional summer course, to spend more time writing. Also he wanted to spend more time with his physcian-wife and their new son. "Things seem pretty well balanced now," Martini said in an interview at his home on the Hawaiian island of Maui.

How Martini "balances" so much in his life marvels some people. Says Martini: "The only way I've been able to do this successfully is to work long hours." Martini usually is up by 6 a.m. and in the office by 8. Six to seven days a week, he writes until he either gets hungry for dinner, generally 8 p.m., or is distracted. "The pace gets particularly bad when we're in a production cycle." Not always does he feel in control. In 1995, with two books in production and a revision under development, Martini said: "The office is like a magnet putting at me. There's always something with an urgent flag on it."

Martini earned a 1974 bachelor's degree in zoology, magna cum laude, from the University of New Hampshire, and a 1974 doctorate in comparative and functional anatomy from Cornell University. He moved to Hawaii in 1980 and taught science at Maui Community College. He spent summers between 1980 and 1992 at Shoals Marine Laboratory at Cornell as a resident core faculty member.

Reader-friendly texts

With a diverse audience of Caucasians, Asians, Hawaiians and other minorities in his Maui Community College classes, Ric Martini saw how students strruggled with existing textbooks. So he decided to write his own. Thus in 1989 was born Fundamentals of Anatomy and Physiology, which revolutionized teaching in the sciences. The book incorporated Martini's informal lecture style. The goal, he said, was to give students "every possible assistance in organizing new information." The pedagogical framework allowed students to test themselves to make sure they understood what they were reading before moving on to other ideas.

The second edition of Fundamentals won an Association of Biological Illustrators award for artwork. The book is chocked full of illustrations that make it simple for students to, for example, both read about the muscular system or other systems and see them at the same time.

Martini's second textbook, Human Anatomy, coauthored with Professor Michael J. Timmons, won TAA's Texty for excellence. "This may be as close as a book can come to making the learning of an enormous mass of anatomical detail interesting and enjoyable," said one TAA judge. Another judge called it "a beautiful book."

Human Anatomy was the "first attempt to combine the narrative of traditional textbooks with the visual component of an anatomy atlas," Martini said. The trim size, 10 7/8 by 12 inches, allowed a lot of the art to be life size. The page that shows the intrinsic muscles of the hand, for example, allows students to put their hands right on top for easy comparison. Little wonder that the text became the best-selling textbook in its field the first year.

A third textbook, Essentials of Anatomy andPhysiology, was coauthored with Ed Bartholomew, another biologist who lives and teaches on Maui. "Essentials has the most diverse audience," Martini said. "It's the course people will take for millions of reasons. It touches on everything enough to provide a foundation for other courses." Both Foundations and Essentials have a companion applications manual as a reference outside of class. The manual includes discussions on 200 or so relatively common disorders with cross-references to the text for background information. "It seems to help keep them interested," Martini said. "Students in these courses care more about what goes wrong and how to fix it."

From east coast to paradise

Ric Martini grew up in Pompton Place, New Jersey, a woodsy suburban area with 5,000 people. Never a big fan of winter things, he loved spending time at the beach. So when he got the opportunity to teach at Maui Community College in Hawaii, he jumped at it. "Hawaii has pretty close to the nicest climate on the planet," Martini said. "It almost always has a breeze and is never too hot or too cold. I like being outdoors and going to the beach on Sundays. Here, you can pretty much count year round that you'll be able to do that." In addition to the great weather, Martini also likes Hawaii's diversity. "It is a very different society in that it is multicultural. Americans are the minority, only making up one-third of the population," he said. It's also a very tolerent culture, he said, with no strict dress code. "The only time I wear a tie is when I go to a lecture on the mainland," Martini said.

Martini retired from Maui Community College two years ago to write textbooks full-time. His Fundamentals of Anatomy and Physiology holds a TAA Texty for excellence and an award from the Association of Biological Illustrators for its art. He now also gets to spend more time with his physician-wife Kathleen and his toddler P.K.

He and his family love taking trips on their 43-foot cutter-rigged double-ended sailboat every year. Martini's first big sailing trip was in 1975 from Maine to Australia through the Panama Canal. Now he sails to places like Fiji with his wife and son, who first sailed at seven months. Their last trip, in November 1996, was a couple weeks in Fiji. "It was the first time we'd done any extended sailing alone," he said. "It took some time to get used to having P.K. stumbling around the boat, but we ended up having a really relaxed time. P.K. loved fishing with his homemade fishing pole. Watching him have a good time was the best part of the trip."

Martini also raises cilapia, a food fish originally from Africa, that weigh about 2 1/2 pounds and taste like small mouth bass. He grows his hybrid strain in three 12-foot diameter wading pools in his backyard. "They'll grow quite happily there," he said. "I sometimes sell them, but since we live 40 minutes from town, and get only $3 per fish, it's hard to make it worthwhile. Our friends end up taking them home as presents." Martini also grows several tropical fruits in his backyard including papaya, bananas and passion fruit.

In addition to degrees in human anatomy and zoology, Martini is also a NAUI certified SCUBA instructor and holds a U.S. Merchant Marine License toserve as Master of commercial sail and power vessels.

— reported by Kim Pawlak, 1997